Now if we Could Just Combine Them…

Financially, The United States of America is heading the way of Greece, Britain and France. Rebellion and fiscal implosion are possible (likely?), and a dedicated third party is almost definite, if we don’t balance the budget by 2013. Unfortunately, few Members of Congress are willing to take the political risks necessary to balance the budget at all, never mind by 2013.

Fortunately, at least some Republicans are willing to take a stab at eventual balance of the budget. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) has his Roadmap, but I do not consider it all that serious since it adds debt for over 50 years before balancing the budget. We can’t afford that. What we can perhaps afford is the Ryan-Rivlin proposal which, as Veronique de Rugy shows here, significantly diminishes the cost of health care over the next 40 years and saves hundreds of billions annually while doing so.

Unfortunately, it’s not enough to worry about the long-term debt if we can’t get past the short-term. This is where the decent, though not nearly expansive enough, Spending Reduction Act kicks in. Proposed this week in The Washington Examiner by Senator Jim Demint (R-SC), the House’s Republican Study Committee (RSC) Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) and the RSC’s Budget and Spending Taskforce leader Scott Garrett (R-NJ), it aims to cut $2.5 trillion in discretionary spending over the next decade.

However, no plan to balance the budget is complete without looking at national defense and budgetary fraud, and this is where Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) enters the field of play. First with his various attempts to combat $100 billion in Medicare and Medicaid fraud (see one example from the last Congress here), and secondly with his detailed memorandum last year, Coburn is a one-man wrecking machine in the Senate.

If even half of the potential savings in these efforts are realized, the federal budget would drop by over $200 billion right away. Add in the medium-term and long-term impacts of defense and health reforms and we might actually have a balanced budget before Indiana governor Mitch Daniels hits his second term. (Of course, with Chris Christie as his vice president, maybe it will happen even faster. One can only hope.)

The Chamber of Commerce & Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX)

According to its website, the Chamber of Commerce’s mission statement is as follows:

“To advance human progress through an economic, political and social system based on individual freedom, incentive, initiative, opportunity, and responsibility.”

As such, you can understand my confusion when I read this by The Washington Examiner’s Timothy Carney:

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has issued its 2009 congressional scorecard, and once again, Rep. Ron Paul, R-Tex. — certainly one of the two most free-market politicians in Washington — gets the lowest score of any Republican.

Paul was one of a handful of GOP lawmakers not to win the Chamber’s “Spirit of Enterprise Award.” He scored only a 67%, bucking the Chamber on five votes, including:

• Paul opposed the “Solar Technology Roadmap Act,” which boosted subsidies for unprofitable solar energy technology.
• Paul opposed the “Travel Promotion Act,” which subsidizes the tourism industry with a new fee on international visitors.
• Paul opposed the largest spending bill in history, Obama’s $787 billion stimulus bill.

(Rep John Duncan, R-Tenn., tied Ron Paul with 67%. John McHugh, R-N.Y., scored a 40%, but he missed most of the year because he went off to the Obama administration.)

Growing up, I kept hearing about the great and powerful Chamber of Commerce, and how it was the defender of business. Being a naive conservative, I assumed “free market” and “pro-business” went together. Fortunately, the Chamber’s support of the bailout started my education, and Carney’s column last year about insurance companies- and, as such, the separation between “pro-business” and “pro-free markets” was the icing on the cake.

Going back to the Chamber’s mission statement, I would argue its ratings (and, related, some of its policy positions) violate the following portion of the statement: “advance human progress…based on individual freedom, incentive, initiative, opportunity, and responsibility.” Since when does supporting government bailouts, subsidies and other intrusions in the market increase human progress, individual freedom, initiative, opportunity and responsibility? (Hint: NEVER) One could argue incentive is helped by government intrusion, though obviously the Chamber and I disagree on where incentivizing should stop. Certainly, these sort of incentives violate the rest of the statement, and thus invalidate any defense of perverse government incentives.

Secondly, I would argue the Chamber is invalidating its very existence, which is to help businesses. Its site claims over 96% of the Chamber’s members are small businesses, with less than 100 employees. Since when does supporting items for big businesses (such as TARP) help those 96% of businesses that are too small to save?

Unfortunately, this is not the first time the Chamber has invalidated its mission or existence with its ratings. Last year, according to Carney (emphasis mine),

Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., had the most conservative voting record in 2008 according to the American Conservative Union (ACU), and was a “taxpayer hero” according to the National Taxpayer’s Union (NTU), but the U.S. Chamber of Commerce says his 2008 record was less pro-business than Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton.
This year’s picture was less glaring, but it’s still more evidence that “pro-business” is not the same as “pro-freedom.” The U.S. Chamber is the former. Ron Paul, and the libertarian position, is the latter.

David Boaz at CATO says it best, in response to the rating (emphasis mine):

But to suggest that Paul is wrong to vote against business subsidies — or that DeMint was wrong to vote against Bush’s 2008 stimulus package and the $700 billion TARP bailout – certainly does illustrate how much difference there can be between “pro-business” and “pro-market.” Instead of “Spirit of Enterprise,” the Chamber should call these the “Spirit of Subsidy Awards.”

For what they’re worth, the Chamber’s House ratings can be seen here.

Stimulus Fail, Part 2 (Part 3? 4?)

The Washington Examiner’s Mark Hemingway takes it away with this one:

“A new analysis of the $157 billion distributed by the American Reinvestment and Recovery act, popularly known as the stimulus bill, shows that the funds were distributed without regard for what states were most in need of jobs.”

Later: “The Mercatus Center analysis also found that Democratic congressional districts received on average almost double the funding of Republican congressional districts. Republican congressional districts received on average $232 million in stimulus funds while Democratic districts received $439 million on average.”

Lastly: “Finally, the Mercatus analysis shows that a majority of the funds allocated went to public rather than private entities — nearly $88 billion to $69 billion.”

What a surprise- you mean to tell me the stimulus is failing again? I’m shocked. Really. (Okay, not really.)

This is really bad, for four reasons: first, since a majority of public employees are members of unions, the money is going to sources of voting power for Democrats as opposed to helping all Americans (assuming, of course, it did help, which is doubtful). Secondly, the money was not distributed for efficienty of employment- even though that was its selling point. Thirdly, the money was spread by two departments not Congress, which means either those departments are biased (unlikely) or they are following a formula, as the study Hemingway quotes concludes, and that means the formula is skewed. Fourth, this is almost exactly 20% of the $770 billion approved by Congress, and it’s been ten months or so since it was approved.

George Will called it- “Which suggests that Stimulus II is…primarily designed to save a few dozen jobs — those of Democratic members of the House and Senate.”

Government Employees & Salaries Growing

The Washington Examiner and NRO, among others, criticize the growing number of employees on the government roll. I think the NRO piece does a better job of going after the real problem covered in the USA TODAY- not that the government is adding employees (yes, it’s a problem, but let’s allow the liberals to do their Depression-era employment strategy until the recession ends) but that in 18 months the number of Department of Transportation employees making $170,000 or more has gone from one (uno, a singular individual, whatever you want to call it) to over 1,600. That’s quite a jump, and it’s not the the only excessive pay jump analyzed at all three links above.

Of course, the same people adding to the government rolls (i.e., Democrats) killed the D.C. Voucher Program recently, even though it not only saves millions of taxpayer dollars but also educates its students- poor minorities, by and large- better than the horrific D.C. public school system. The Washington Post has the depressing story.

Here’s Your Bogus Jobs Map

Thanks to the Washington Examiner for putting this together. What an excellent resource!

View Bogus jobs ‘created or saved’ by the Stimulus in a larger map

-nick